Burning Brighter Still
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which Warren comes home from a long day of work and a long night of crime fighting to find Will sprawled out across the entirety of their bed and the boys enjoy a quiet night in together. SLASH.


Burning Brighter Still

_**Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: partners (wild card). Could be considered a follow up to my other Sky High fic, Combustion, but can stand alone, as well. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.**_

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Warren comes home from a long day of work and a long night of crime fighting to find Will sprawled out on his stomach across the entirety of the bed they share in their newly purchased (thanks to Stronghold Realty) home. He's got one arm tucked up under the pillow, while the other is extended toward the emptier bit of the sizable mattress, where Warren would be if he hadn't gotten held up.

Will's hair is a mess, dark spikes sticking up this way and that, but they still look lingeringly damp, like a shower preceded his turning in for the night.

"Mm," he mumbles in sleepy content, shifting a bit.

Warren watches on, studying the slow rise and fall of the bare back laid out in front of him, all sinewy muscles and pale skin, mottled with old scars and fresh bruises from the battles they've fought at each other's sides. The sheets rest low on his equally bare hips, and Warren just can't help himself. Never could, where Will was concerned.

He peels off his own clothes, and carefully, quietly, climbs onto the mattress.

He lightly triggers his fire when he drags a hand slowly up Will's back, letting the warmth radiating off his hand seep into Will's skin in the coolness of the dark room, lit only by the slivers of silvery winter moonlight seeping in through the drawn blinds.

Will moves in his sleep, rolls a little more to one side, and Warren spots a content smile on his face that suggests he's a little more awake than he appears to be.

"Hey," he greets, with a smile of his own falling into place.

"Hey yourself," Will answers, his voice rough and gravely with sleep. A flash of his own powers has them flipped, and Warren finds himself pinned to the bed beneath the younger man. Will leans down and steals a kiss, and their fingers tangle together, despite the fact that his hands are still smoldering slightly. His fire never touches Will. "What was the hold up?" Will sulks, "I was looking forward to a night in with you."

Warren leans up, bites lightly at Will's neck, and works at the spot just below his jaw that challenges his control every time. He hums in satisfaction as he takes in the mark he leaves there and then again at the hungry look on Will's face. "There was yet another demented super-villain was out terrorizing the citizens of Maxville, so Inferno had to deal with it."

"And they didn't call Airstrike?"

"Inferno specifically told them not to bother Airstrike for at least a week. Or else they'd be dealing with an inferno of their own."

Will's eyes narrow, and he asks, "Doesn't Airstrike get a say in that decision?"

Warren frowns, as the memories of a battle gone bad hit him again. "Not when Inferno thought he almost lost him, no," he answers, and he doesn't even really notice that his grip on Will's hips tightens possessively. "After what happened last night..." After finding Will unconscious and bloody in the midst of a treacherous fight against one of their biggest enemies, Calypso, he's still a little on edge.

"Hey, I get it, it's okay," Will assures him, and, honestly, the younger man can't really argue. He'd done much the same thing the last time Warren was injured on a mission, so much so that he flew his injured partner over to his parents place and left him in the capable hands of both the Commander and Jetstream until the threat was dealt with and Will could get back to him. So, he's not surprised when Will gives up his protest easily, since he can't begrudge Warren the same reactions he had himself, the same protective plans. Will settles his hands on Warren's chest, and asks, "Who was it, at least?"

"Just Nemesis," Warren shrugs. "No big deal."

Despite his name, Nemesis is probably the most harmless super-villain they've got in their crazy, little town. He's not even really a super-villain, just a minor inconvenience that only falls under superhero jurisdiction because he knows about superheroes. He went to Sky High, once upon a time, but a freakish accident rendered his telekinetic powers mostly useless. They work, at best, about ten percent of the time and even then, he's limited to small objects and only for short periods of time, with terrible control.

"What was he doing this time?" Will asks, letting Warren steal another long, slow kiss.

"Would you believe me if I told you he was ransacking a warehouse downtown? Because I didn't believe them when they told me that's what they were sending me out for tonight. He was throwing boxes everywhere. It was a mess. Apparently I was the only one available to deal with him."

Will laughs, "Sorry I missed out on that one."

"Yeah, I bet you are, Stronghold," Warren answers, with a roll of his eyes and a move to draw Will back down to him. He tangles his fingers in Will's hair, though he's careful to avoid the bump that knocked him out in battle, and loses himself in another languid kiss.

At some point, Will drops down to lay beside him, as hands begin to wander over familiar flesh, tracing over those old scars and mindful of the new bruises.

One of Will's hands heads south, working its way past the tangle of blankets that have twisted around their hips with all their shifting. Warren counters his move and revels in the lazy familiarity of this as they draw things out as long as possible before it ends, and Will curls up close at Warren's side.

It's hard to believe sometimes that they've been together for nearly a decade now - high school and college and now the real world of jobs and mortgages and official superhero-dom. He wonders sometimes, on those nights that Will's on duty and he's home (few and far between, because they are partners in every sense of the word) if he would have gone bad if he'd never met Will. He likes to think he wouldn't have lived up to (down to?) that particular expectation, but he'd had no one back then. And now he has this. Family (Will's, who only completely came around sometime after the third time he'd saved Will's ass), friends (also Will's, but they'd never exactly taken Warren's opposition to heart), and Will. And he's pretty damn sure that the pre-Will Warren wouldn't exactly take waking up with the son of his father's worst enemy drooling all over him quite as agreeably as post-Will Warren is going to in the morning, when he opens his eyes and finds Will flopped all across his chest. Pre-Will Warren definitely wouldn't be considering the merits of getting up early to cook a decent breakfast for Will before he has to get to work. Pre-Will Warren was never scared of the super-villains that plagued Maxville (what was there to be scared of when your own father had topped the most wanted list?), but this Warren is. Those people that he could have been, they could destroy his world. They're out there, an ever-present risk to himself and Will and the friends and family he'd never thought he'd want (or need). He's sure that the only thing that could ever possibly turn him bad would be losing Will, but even if that were to ever happen (he doesn't like to think about it, but when he does, he's beyond sure that he'd throw himself in front of anything for Will's sake. Or, barring that, that he'd be going down, too, and taking whatever monster was responsible with them) and he survived, Will would probably haunt his ass into staying on the right side of the battle, no matter how much he'd want to fight until there was nothing left but an inferno.

"Dude," Will says, and that's enough to snap Warren out of his darkening thoughts and back to the comfortable security of their bed in their room in their house, where he has Will all to himself. "What are you thinking about that has you all intense and broody looking like you were in high school?"

Sometimes he forgets how well Will can read him, too. "I just don't like it when you're hurt."

Will shifts back a little, props himself up on one elbow so he can look at Warren properly, and Warren can see his mind working on where this is going, "We've both had worse than I got last night."

"Doesn't matter," he argues, because that's not really the point, here. He'll always worry about Will. "Do you ever think that in some other universe I could have been the one hurting you? If I'd turned out like everyone thought, then it would have been you against me, instead of you and me."

"You wouldn't-" Will starts, because this is a conversation they've had before, especially when they first got together.

"I could have. I can see it in every bad guy we take down, what I could have been. If it hadn't been for you," he says, though he hates that because it sounds like Will is responsible for his actions, like Will could be blamed if something ever did happen, "there's no way I would have turned out this... well, _good_."

"If we're going to argue infinite universes, then there's a universe where your dad isn't evil and mine is. There's one where our dads stayed friends and you and I grew up together. There's one where we never met at all, one where there aren't any superpowers. And we're not worrying about any of those things, so why should we worry about any reality expect our own?" Will reasons. "This universe, where we're both good and we're together and we're the best damn superhero partners the world has ever seen."

Warren laughs, "That might be pushing it a little," he quips, but he feels a little of the self-doubt that had crept in creep back out of him and he claims a kiss with a smile on his face.

"You think so?" Will teases, but Warren can see that his eyes are heavy and a glance at the clock on the bedside table tells him that if they don't get to sleep soon then those morning plans aren't happening at all. "Go to sleep, yeah?"

"Yeah," Warren agrees, straightening out the blankets around them, letting the warmth of his powers take the chill out of them where the cotton hits bare skin. They both settle in, Will, as per usual, flopped all over him, as they start to drift off to sleep.

"Warren?" Will mumbles, when they're both on the edges. He only manages a quiet 'hmm?' in response, but the following, "As far as I'm concerned, you're good in all of those other universes, too," makes him hold on even tighter to his lover because he doesn't know what to say to that.

All those other versions of him had better know how damn lucky they are if they get to come home to all those other versions of Will; he certainly knows how lucky he is to get that, though he has no idea what he did to deserve it.


End file.
